`Accordion Nerd` Tunes Up Respect For Instrument

November 24, 1989|By Paul Weingarten, Chicago Tribune.

SAN FRANCISCO — In the local lore, it has become known as the Night of the Accordions, a memorable Friday evening last June when Tom Torriglia led his band of a dozen accordion players on a series of daring raids into 36 bars and night clubs.

Once inside, the ragtag band-they prefer to be called ``accordionistas``- wo uld seize the stage unannounced, serenade a stunned audience with ``Lady of Spain,`` then vanish into the evening.

``What a gig,`` an ebullient Torriglia said later. ``People PAID us to leave.``

The accordion blitzkrieg was just one prong in a six-month guerrilla campaign launched by Torriglia and his band-Those Darn Accordions!-to convince city supervisors to declare the accordion the ``official musical instrument`` of San Francisco. The band has gathered 400 signatures on petitions and has persuaded San Francisco Supervisor Willie Kennedy to sponsor a resolution.

`There is no other instrument that could be the official instrument,``

asserted Torriglia, a self-described ``accordion nerd`` who has played the instrument since he was 7. ``Most people think the accordion is real bizarre, and that is the opinion most people have of San Francisco, so it`s perfect.`` But Those Darn Accordions! want more. They want respect. They realize they have a big problem. The accordion may be the most maligned instrument in the world, ``a giant `Scarlet A` dangling around the hapless player`s neck,`` as a Keyboard Magazine writer described it in a profile of the instrument everyone loves to ridicule.

A recent Far Side comic, for example, showed entrants to Heaven receiving their harps.

In the cartoon`s second panel, the devil greets new arrivals.

``Welcome to hell,`` the Devil says. ``Here`s your accordion.``

``In China, they made over 1 million accordions last year,`` said Clyde Forsman, who, at 74, is the senior member of Those Darn Accordions! (TDA).

``It`s the national instrument of Finland and it`s big in Sweden. I can`t understand why people laugh at it here.``

``The music was so schmaltzy, and people grew to think of accordion music as Lawrence Welk music,`` Seekins said. ``That`s like thinking that Ferrante and Teicher are the only piano players in the world.``

The Ted Mack Amateur Hour, a 1950s variety show, didn`t help either with

``all those geeky 13-year-old girls with bad skin`` playing the accordion, added Seekins, who is a seismic geologist for the United States Geological Survey.

The accordion campaign has drawn some flak from those who argue that the guitar would be a better musical symbol for the city that spawned the Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin and Country Joe and the Fish. Willie Kennedy, the city supervisor who plans to introduce the accordion resolution later this year, replies that the accordion ``plays all kinds of music and it has a distinct sound-it`s kind of like this city.``

Indeed, San Francisco accordion cognoscenti claim this bohemian metropolis was the accordion capital of the United States in the 1920s, with no fewer than eight manufacturers. America`s oldest active accordion factory, Colombo and Sons, was founded here in 1907.

Colombo still sells accordions, but like other American manufacturers, the company stopped making the instrument in the early 1950s after the rising popularity of the guitar and cutthroat overseas competition forced them out of the business.

``Things were bad,`` said Gordon Piatanesi, grandson of the founder of Colombo and Sons. ``We accordion people were importing and selling guitars.`` The market has rebounded in recent years and the squeezebox has even begun to infiltrate into the rock bands of Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Talking Heads, Bruce Hornsby, John Mellencamp, Los Lobos, and The Hooters.

The accordion renaissance is cresting in San Francisco, where TDA`s Seekins said ``people are sick of having their eardrums busted, and they`re sick of music that clearly comes out of a machine (synthesizer).`` The accordion, she rhapsodized, is a ``passionate`` instrument that can handle everything from polka to zydeco to classical.

The band is not only seeking official instrument status, but is plotting several other stunts to draw attention to the instrument. Torriglia and his comrades are hoping to assemble at least 300 accordion players this spring at a local downtown plaza to play ``Lady of Spain,`` and thus earn a mention in the Guiness Book of World Records.

The group also has been signed to endorse Hohner accordions. That company already boasts the endorsement of the estimable Phoebe Legere, whom it calls a ``pop-rock phenomenon`` in its promotional materials. One of those is a poster of Miss Legere, an aspiring actress (``The Toxic Avenger, Part III``), in black leather hot pants, embracing a red-and-white Hohner accordion.

The company isn`t sure yet what it will do with Those Darn Accordions!

``I`ve never seen a whole group of them before,`` said Jack Kavoukian, Hohner`s director of marketing.

Meanwhile, the band is also delving into city politics. At a recent rally for a local referendum to build a new baseball stadium, Those Darn Accordions! boarded a motorized cable car and toured the city while playing ``Lady of Spain.`` As they left, one bystander, Sue Loos, was asked what she thought of the band`s accordion campaign.